Throughout history man has sought better weapons and means of conducting war. One important element contributing to successful combat and military success is battlefield intelligence. One element of battlefield intelligence is battle damage assessment (BDA), which provides information about damage inflicted on a target.
This BDA information is important for determining plans, deployment, and success of missions and/or other objectives. Such objectives may include, e.g., whether the target is destroyed, whether a weapon is effective, whether subsequent missions on the target are required, and how many. Conventional methods of BDA have relied on satellites, air reconnaissance, and field reports to determine the effectiveness of a particular weapon and/or mission. However, each of these methods has significant drawbacks.
For instance, all of these methods rely on obtaining and interpreting visual information to reach a conclusion regarding BDA; however, complete visual information often is not available for a particular target. For example, visual information may be impaired by weather, terrain, distance, the enemy, or even the target itself. Visual impairment caused by the target includes, e.g., when a warhead penetrates inside a structure. In addition, visual information requires human interpretation, which is subjective and time intensive. Furthermore, there can be significant delay between the time a target is struck and the time the visual information is obtained and interpreted.